How my iPad kicked my PS3 while it was down
Sony’s Playstation Network has been down for weeks due to hacking. As of today, it’s slowly coming back online, starting with Europe and North American. I don’t think I could possibly care less.
The PS Network has been down for so long now that what would otherwise have been an inconvenience has turned into a massive economic disaster for Sony. Game retailers are reporting massive jumps in number of PS3 consoles that have been returned in the last few week and that is likely to continue for quite a while even when the system is back online. That’s because the outage has made people realize one of two things; they want something that works, or that they don’t really need a console at all.
The latter is absolutely the case for me. I haven’t touched my PS3 in ages- actually not since before the outage started- and have instead been playing through games on my iPad. At the moment it’s Order & Chaos Online that’s taking up my time. At this point I’ve likely spent more time on this game than on the two previous PS3 titles I bought- Crysis 2 and Homefront- combined. Oh, and those two cost me $200 total, while Order & Chaos Online cost me $6.99. The control system is brilliant in Order & Chaos Online, which combined with great graphics and a stupidly huge game and social elements makes it a winner. Once I’m tired of this game, I’ll dig deeper into Star Front: Collision and then Eternal Legacy HD which I picked up on (a still running) sale for $0.99. I also still play We Rule Quests, which is still fun to play after more than half a year due to 2+ updates per week (a big advantage of certain freemium games).
With all of that going on I have trouble seeing why I should keep my PS3. Sure, the games have better graphics and sometimes better controls (but not always), but they’re certainly not always longer and they’re up to 100 times more expensive (that’s not an exaggeration). With the iPad 2 getting a 9x bump in graphics power a year after the iPad 1 came out and the PS3 having the same hardware was when it was released 5 years ago, I also have to myself when we’ll be at the point where they’re equal in graphics as well. Between Onlive, game controller support and increasing focus on mobile gaming from big companies, it seems that all we need is for someone to put all the pieces together to get tablets fully into the gaming market.
Then again, Angry Birds is likely to be available on refrigerators and coffee makers and cause a complete shutdown of society before that happens.
